


Resurgam

by Phoenixflames12



Category: Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Book 6: A Breath of Snow and Ashes, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-27 03:57:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9957896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenixflames12/pseuds/Phoenixflames12
Summary: ''He didn't say anything', Roger said quite gently and put a hand on my arm.'He- he just cried.'A missing moment from A Breath of Snow and Ashes where Jamie is comforted by Brianna.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Deliverance](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7398433) by [Lenny9987](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lenny9987/pseuds/Lenny9987). 



I Will Rise Again

 

He watches Malva Christie and Mrs Bug move about Claire’s bed as if in a dream.

 

He wants it to be a dream. Wants desperately for the image of his wife lying in a tangle of bed linen caught with the ragged, sweaty locks of shorn hair, to be a dream.

 

 _Mo nighean don,_ the words catch in a sudden sob against his lips, forcing themselves into the open.

 

He is unable to bear it, unwilling to see his wife, his beautiful, fierce Sassenach as a shorn corpse, lying at the mercy of the sickness that she had worked so hard to prevent.

 

‘Mo Sorcha…’ Ignoring Mrs Bug’s scandalised glance at him, or the girl’s wide, frightened eyes, (God help the lass when her father found out and God help him when he would inevitably have to confront Tom about it), he stumbles towards the bed.

 

‘Milaird… I… I dinna think it’s wise…’ He ignores them both, his gaze only for his wife.

 

Only for the weight of a snarled curl that that lay near her cheek, catching between his fingers; shards of auburn and hazel catching between his fingers, to make him sink beside the bed, her long, limp fingers pressed between his own.

 

_Dinna leave me!_

_Please… I beg ye mo nighean don…_

‘Jamie…’ The rough scrape of Roger Mac’s voice brings him momentarily out of the darkness.

 

His son-in-law’s face is pale with shadowed exhaustion, his eyes wide and bright against the sharp lines of his cheekbones. _The green of wet seaweed and summer leaves,_ he thinks, the weight of Roger’s hand on his shoulder shivering slightly.

 

Desperately he tries to shrug off the hand, wanting to be alone in his pain, alone in the frustration that he is unable to do anything to ease her suffering.

 

‘Ye must prepare yerself,’ the minister’s voice comes from beyond the great, grey veil of grief that separates him from reality.

 

It is a cautious statement, but one that chokes the rage in his throat, the emotion caught in a violent shake of his head.

_He will not prepare himself, because to do that would accept the inevitable and he will not accept it. He cannot, as much for her sake as for his own._

He can hear Roger say something in what could be comfort, but the words do not register.

 

Hears his own voice in reply, the words bitten in an anger that he knows is misdirected. They would not be if Roger was someone else, anyone else but his son-in-law and a minister, but he cannot help himself.

 

‘I’m no ready to lose her again’, he says finally; reaching to clutch again at her hand, that hand who had given such comfort to him, that had brought him back from the brink of death more times than he cares to remember.

 

_Remembers how he had struggled to find her in the chaos of the storm that had brought them both to Georgia. Remembers the panic boiling his throat as he had fought through the rising, rushing water, forcing his exhausted body back against the rip of the tide._

_Remembers her limp weight in his arms, eyes fluttering into consciousness as they had surfaced, his arms fighting against the pull of the waves to hold her as her vision had cleared for a sudden, blessed moment and a flicker of a smile had crossed her face, aching with exhaustion._

_Remembers the stab of fear as she had slumped against him, the roar of the wind tearing a cry from his lips, cursing the wind, cursing the storm, cursing the fact that she could be so easily taken from him by something so easily tamed as the weather._

_‘Damn you, Sassenach! Damn you! I swear if ye die on me, I’ll kill ye!’_

He isn’t aware of the tears damming up behind his eyes, breaking forth in a shimmering curtain, momentarily protecting him from what logic tells him is the truth. The grief bursts out of them in a silent roar of desperate rage, his body crumpling against her, the tears splattering over her pale, taut face; grief as red and as painful as blood, bursting in a cascade of diamonds over her stricken form.

 

He doesn’t know how long he stays there, the sobs choking themselves against his throat, burning away all sense of feeling.

 

He feels the weight of a shaking hand reaching tentatively for his shoulder, is only conscious of a question coming hesitantly from the shadows.

 

‘Da?’

 

Brianna’s voice is thick with emotion, but he cannot bear to look at her.

 

‘Da … Jamie. It’s late. Please. You… You can’t do any more tonight.’

 

The weight of her hand on his shoulder tightens slightly, the lines and bends of a life that he had not witnessed digging into the wool of his waistcoat.

 

‘I canna leave her, _mo leannan,’_ he says at last, the words choked and broken as he pulls his head from his hands. The room is swathed in dusky evening light, the sunset glowing red in his daughter’s hair.

 

‘I know’, she says at last. The pain of that knowledge glows in her gaze as she follows his eyes, reaching out to finger a lock of cool brown hair shining with vibrant silver lying on the coverlet.

 

‘I know’, she repeats again when he doesn’t answer.

 

His heart cracks at the sight of the lock lying against her palm; a small, clean sound like the stem of a daisy splitting in two.

 

‘Ye willnae leave me?’

 

It is a child’s question, a question that he had asked Willie, (why was he thinking of his brother at a time like this?) multiple times when they were small. Had asked through the tears of childhood ignorance as he knelt by his brothers’ bed, watching the pox blurred features slowly sharpening into manhood tremble with fever.

 

‘I won’t Da’, she says at last and he lets go; allowing himself to be engulfed completely by the spasms of grief that he has fought so hard to supress as his daughter gathers his body into her arms.

 

‘I won’t ever leave you Da. I promise.’

* * *

 

_**Fin** _

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x
> 
> Song suggestions: The Losing Side of History- (Outlander Season 1 OST)


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